87600 hours
by greyslostwho
Summary: My initial response to what happened. *****SPOILERS*****Two possible looks at what life might be like for Brennan ten years after THAT SCENE in the Wannabe in the Weeds. One sad, one fluffy.
1. she walks through a field

**Ok, this is my sad :'( response to said horrific episode. Tissue warning.**

She walked through the rows of stones, head held high, elegance in her age and grief. There wasn't time to cry tears. Not anymore.  
Her auburn hair, threaded now with a few lines of silver, blew across her face in the wind, stinging her skin. Her eyes blurred, watering because of the breeze. That was all.

She reached the stone she had been looking for. It didn't change. Well, it did, but not a lot. Somehow she expected to come back one year and for it to have a different inscription on it, a different name. And she would realise there had been a mistake and he would be by her side again.  
This year it was slightly more sunken, slightly more speckled with lichen and crumbling around the edges. She lay the flowers by the side of it, still graceful and demure, her spine straight and strong. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a trembling hand, and then forced herself to read the letters carved into the stone.

SPECIAL AGENT SEELEY BOOTH

1972-2008

Beloved father

A hero, a fighter for justice.  
Killed in action.  
May those who knew him never forget him.

"I won't." she made the silent promise she made every year. "I won't forget you, Booth."  
She took a deep breath. She was only whispering, but her voice echoed in her ears and her heart was thumping. "I won't forget what you did for me. I won't forget how you died. Neither will Parker. I promise you that."

She remembered holding him to her, feeling the warm blood soak through her shirt, feeling the life seep from him. Knowing, as the paramedics arrived, that they were too late, clinging to him and sobbing.

A friend's hand on her arm, leading her away. Angela.

Angela who had married Hodgins a year after, in a small ceremony, and had his daughter six months later.

Celia, because it sounded like Seeley.

When Brennan held her little goddaughter in her arms for the first time she had closed up, handed the baby back to a bewildered Hodgins, and run home and cried her heart out all night. Because holding the baby she had seen the future she had never allowed herself to dream of: Booth, and his children, and her and...

Suddenly she couldn't breathe. Her throat was thick. She turned her head to where her car was parked, just outside the FBI cemetery. Cam was waiting for her in the car. She hadn't let Brennan drive, not today.

Camille Saroyan, who had shared with Booth what Brennan had never had the chance to, who had had to phone Booth's parents, and Rebecca, and tell them what had happened.

Rebecca had told Parker. Brennan hadn't seen the little boy until the funeral, when he looked up at her with those huge, familiar eyes and said in a shaky voice: "Do you miss Daddy like I do, Dr Bones?"

Bones. No one had called her that in ten years. It was one of the subjects Sweets had tried to breach at their weekly counselling sessions, sessions which had evolved into coffee. Sweets was married now. His wife was expecting a child. And the same could be said for Zack, soon to be a father with Naomi from Paeleontology.

All around her, so much life. She sunk to her knees. All she could see was the grey stone in front of her, the emptiness in her heart now. Emptiness that would never go away. Because without him she was nothing. Not anymore. No matter how much all her friends tried to be there for her, Angela even tried to get her back on the dating scene after five years, no one measured up to him. Even her father and Russ. Their attempts to comfort her had been near to useless. Because after years of being objective, being what some people would call cold, Temperance Brennan had broken. And the man who usually fixed her - he couldn't, not ever again.

_She used to dream that she would have done something different. She would have never stopped kissing him that day under the mistletoe, she would never have got up on that stage to sing that day. _

_She would dream that she would wake up and he would wander into her bedroom, slide under the bedclothes beside her, wrap his arms around her and for the first time in ten years she wouldn't feel so...old. He would kiss her hair, her neck, her cheek and finally her lips, and she would lay beside him forever and ever, and never let a moment go to waste.  
_

She drew herself together. She had to get back to the Jeffersonian soon, she had a case to be working on. And then this afternoon she would go and see how Parker was doing. She was a busy woman, she had work to do.

She climbed off her knees, wiped her eyes and turned towards the car.

There wasn't time to dream dreams. Not anymore.

**Reviews are like love**


	2. she holds him tight

**And this is my happy response...**

"It's ten years."  
He nodded, snaking an arm gently around her wrist, burying his face in her hair. She continued. "To the day."  
"Did you have another nightmare, Bones?"  
She turned slowly, smiling slightly at his tousled hair, his morning stubble.  
His lips met hers softly, teasing. "I guess." she replied, turning her eyes away from his beautiful big ones.  
He cupped her face with his hand. "It's ok, you know. I still dream about that time with the Gravedigger."  
"Booth, that was years ago."  
"So was this."  
"Yes, but..." she trailed off. "It's irrational. I can't seem to ever forget it. It's not there all the time. Just when it comes to the anniversary, or when I see a similar case. Then I can't stop thinking about it... about how close you were to-"

"Hey." he said, pulling her closer. She had tears in her eyes. He softly placed kiss after kiss on the corner of her mouth until she wiped her eyes furiously and held him away from her, eyes traversing his face as if drinking him in.  
"I love you, Booth." she said, her voice thick. "I don't know what I would do if I ever lost you."  
"I love you too." he said, smiling. He kissed her again. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of telling you that."

She buried her head in his neck, trailing kisses along his collarbone, remembering.

_Crying silently as the ambulance drove away, then following in Angela's car, sobbing hysterically. The only thought that existed was that she might never see him alive again._

_The hours of waiting nearly driving her mad as he was in surgery._

_Holding his hand as he woke up, his eyes locking with hers straight away and her realisation that she couldn't hide from him or herself any longer.  
"I love you." were the first words that escaped her mouth the moment he croaked: "Bones"  
How he had tried to laugh, saying, "Am I dead? Because the only place you would be telling me that in would be heaven."_

_Leaning over him and kissing him, just lightly at first, promising herself, promising everything._

_Holding him all night the first time, craving skin to skin contact, falling in love with him all over again as he kissed the spot behind her ear and murmured: "I love you too, Bones."_

_Marrying him, achieving what everyone had thought was impossible. Knowing, when she stared up into his eyes that 'til death to us part' meant exactly what it said.  
_

The two of them were startled by the sudden dead weight of something (or someone) on the bed. Brennan disengaged herself from Booth to see their four year old, Isobel Christine, dressed in her fairy costume, bouncing excitedly. "Mommy!" she squealed, "You promised I could go to Auntie Angela's today!"  
Booth laughed throatily, still holding his wife's hand in his, and grinned at his daughter. "Five minutes, Iz. Go and decide what you want for breakfast."  
And she bounced off the bed and skipped off. Brennan and Booth stared after her for a moment, both of them smiling without even noticing.  
"You ok?" he asked. She grinned, and leant over and captured his lips, kissing him hard, pinning him underneath her. Then she drew back, slid out of bed and stood up, wandering towards the shower. "I am now." she replied, her smile wide.

**Hope you liked it...**


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